Key Insights From The Forrester Wave™: Network Analysis and Visibility Q2 2023

I founded Lumu with the belief that a paradigm shift was needed in cybersecurity. I’m proud to report that Forrester Research’s report, The Forrester Wave™: Network Analysis and Visibility Q2 2023, has named Lumu as a leader in NAV. The report shows us that the Network Analysis and Visibility (NAV) space is mature, competitive, and offers plenty of value for those seeking to break the current paradigm of alert fatigue, overworked cybersecurity teams, and constant catastrophic breaches.

Network Visibility: the Core of Security Operations

Forrester analyst and the writer of the report, Heath Mullins, writes that “Organizations implement network analysis and visibility (NAV) solutions to gain insight into networks wherever they may be — in the cloud, on-premises, or in hybrid environments.” When threat actors compromise an enterprise’s network infrastructure, they have to use the network itself to escalate privilege and move laterally. By doing so, they leave footprints in the network that can be detected when you know what to look for. Therefore, the network is the ultimate source of truth. Network visibility is the key to detecting that truth. 

The report stresses that NAV is an integral part of a Zero Trust strategy. “There can be no Zero Trust without visibility into what’s happening inside networks,” writes Mullins. The shift to remote work created a challenge to Zero Trust deployments that had limited visibility into compromises affecting users outside the traditional defenses. NAV solutions like Lumu solve that problem by giving organizations insight into the remote devices, but the caveat is that the NAV solution needs to be able to integrate with the rest of the security stack in order to automate the response to these threats.

Mullins writes in our profile that “While Lumu is a relative newcomer to the NAV market, its superior vision is customer-centric and agile.”

Ease of Use and Advanced Contextual Insights

Lumu’s approach to cybersecurity holds that focusing only on technology isn’t enough. Instead, the paradigm shift in cybersecurity needs to look at cybersecurity from all angles: people, processes, and technology.

In 2022, Forrester dedicated a full report to Analyst Experience (AX), noting that, “security analysts find themselves equipped with woefully inadequate tools, considering the criticality of the tasks they perform.” SOC analysts face challenges of high alert volumes, false alerts, and high-pressure environments where mistakes have severe consequences, yet stopping catastrophic events is expected as the norm. There needs to be a shift in focus towards the end-users of cybersecurity tools—the analysts.

Analyst Experience isn’t just aesthetics. Solutions should empower analysts to discover, explore, classify, determine, and execute. In the Forrester Wave report, Mullins notes that “Lumu brings AX to the forefront of operations. Lumu’s focus on AX, useability, and deep correlations created an easy button for daily SOC operations.”

In the Forrester Landscape report, Mullins states about NAV that “The solution correlates this information and presents it to the analyst with rich contextual information from a variety of telemetry sources, reducing downtime and mean time to recovery (MTTR) while identifying threats and malware.”

Lumu provides analysts with extensive contextual information so they can quickly understand confirmed compromise incidents. This includes mapping threats to the MITRE ATT&CK™ Matrix, as well as third-party resources and research.

Customer Experiences and Recommendations

At Lumu, we strive to set a new standard, leveraging advanced correlations, enhanced usability, and proactive measures to transform the analyst experience. 

In the Forrester Wave report, Mullins states that “Reference customers highlighted the support, service, ease of use Lumu provides, and ease of implementation as strengths.” This level of customer satisfaction is evidence of a successful transition to a more user-centric and adaptive cybersecurity approach.

Conclusion

Our profile in the Forrester Wave report concludes that “Medium-size to large enterprises looking for an easily consumed but highly capable NAV product should take a hard look at Lumu.” I echo this sentiment, inviting you to closely examine Lumu’s capabilities. But more than that, I encourage you to delve into The Forrester Wave™: Network Analysis and Visibility Q2 2023 report. Witness for yourself the progress we’ve made and the exciting frontier that lies ahead in the world of cybersecurity.

Reflecting on our journey over the past three years, it’s heartening to see how far we’ve come. When we took up the mantle to transform cybersecurity operations for the better, the concept wasn’t widely accepted. But today, the landscape is remarkably different. The paradigm shift we’ve advocated for is now not just acknowledged but actively embraced by the industry.